Flexible light conduits are employed for a variety of purposes which span the entire range of medical lasers and industrial process lasers. Various types of flexible light conduits, such as optical fibers and optical waveguides, have previously been available. A characteristic of these conventional flexible light conduits is that they tend to cause the spatial coherence of the transmitted beams to be scrambled. This scrambling property of fibers and waveguides is particularly pronounced when the physical cross section of the conduit is very large in comparison to the wavelength of transmitted radiation, such as in situations where the power to be transmitted is sufficiently high as to require a conduit of large cross section. A consequence of the inability of conventional flexible light conduits to maintain coherence properties and mode quality is that the beam loses certain aspects of its focusability at the output of the conduit. This loss of coherence, or scrambling, results in significant transmission attenuation and loss of output power.
This loss of coherence and consequent reduction in the ability to focus the transmitted light from the output end of the flexible conduit, has significantly limited the applications in which flexible light conduits have significant value.